Friday, July 23, 2010

Recently my wife Crystal and I went to the She & Him concert here in L.A. at the Hollywood Bowl and it was awesome. Joined at the concert by our good friend Sam Marin, we are huge fans of the band and it was a blast getting to see them perform live. She ( Zoe ) sang great, and Him (M.Ward) killed it on the guitar. Anyways, I really love concert poster design, so I thought I would throw a little something together to help remember the show, so I made this little "mock" concert poster. I kept this poster simple, and just drew the simple caricatures of the band from memory. My hope is from here on out, every show Crystal and I go to, I'm gonna try and make a little tribute concert poster to go along with the memories.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Growing up, I didn't know it, but Ed Emberley was one of my favorite artists. As a kid I had several of his books, and I have to say he was one of my first artistic inspirations. I used to love to draw from his books, follow the steps, use all the fun shapes, and adding all the detail at the end was my favorite part. One of the things I love about Ed Emberley's work is the way he designed his characters off such simple shapes. It's one of the first things that I think we all learn and do as designers when we are working on a character design, or thinking about structuring a layout drawing for a background. Start simple, and play with simple shapes to help vary your design, then go from there. Anyways, even though I haven't thought of Ed Emberely's work for a little while, his whimsical design principles thankfully are permanently burned into my brain and it wasn't until I saw this post on Cartoon Brew today about a gallery showcasing some work as a tribute to him, that I stopped to take a look back at his work, and reflect on the influence his style and artwork had on me as a young artist.

I'm not part of the gallery opening, but I felt compelled today to illustrate a Sasquatch inspired by Emberley's style ( shown above ) and in true Emberley fashion, I illustrated the steps on how to draw this particular Sasquatch. For anyone who either wants to follow the steps bellow, or has kids who would like to create this Sasquatch from the steps below, go for it! and email me a scan of your piece and I'll post it here on my blog. My only request for those interested would be to follow the steps on real paper with marker, pencil or preferably crayon!

Two great artisists in Trip Park and Amy Mebberson showed their love for Mr. Emberley's work by contributing to this post with their awesome work below.

Here are a few images of Embereley's amazing work I grabbed off the internet. To read more about him click HERE , or head over HERE to buy his books online.

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Recently, I was interviewed by the great Bobby Chiu on his website Sketchoholic.com . Some of the things covered in the interview was my character design contribution to the new film Toy Story 3. If you wanna check out the interview you can see it HERE . For those of you who are new to the Sketchoholic website, here is a little run down of what you can expect to find there:

Sketchoholic.com is where animation artist Bobby Chiu broadcasts live interviews with artists in the animation, film and illustration industry and asks them to share their thoughts and beliefs about art. On other occasions, Bobby also conducts contests where he paints live and encourages people to paint along with him. Winning submissions wins some original art. The site is free to join, just head HERE to do so.

Bobby had asked me to hold a short contest of my own as well for my interview. My contest was to draw/design/create a "Wall Street Cyclops" basically a Cyclops investment banker. The submissions into the contest were awesome! Everyone really blew me away with how many unique, fun and creative ways they apporached the design challenge. You can see the submissions on the page Bobby set up for my interview HERE .

All in all, Bobby has set up a really fun and informative website at Sketchoholic.com. There are tons of great interviews that can be found all over the site with some of the most talented and inspiring artists working today. And in addition to all the great interviews on the site, the drawing/design contests that Bobby holds on the site are a particular favorite of mine, as I love spontaneous character design challenges.

Below is my good friend Austin Madison's contribution to the contest, I just love the putting green and the blue tooth ear piece!